Federal government wants better service at the mobile hotlines – especially at o2

Better service at the mobile hotlines – The long waiting times at the o2 hotline, which caused a lot of criticism in the past months, have called the federal government on the plan. It wants to improve the service quality at the hotlines of mobile telephony providers.

Better service at the hotlines

As the Handelsblatt reports, the federal government wants to provide more accessible mobile hotlines. This can be seen in the answer to a small question from the Greens-Bundestagsfraktion. So far, the design and availability of telephone support is mainly the responsibility of the providers. There is no claim to availability. The Federal Government now wants to examine whether these requirements have to be changed in favor of the customers.

The problems are mainly caused by the network operator o2 at the end of 2016. The telephone hotline and other support routes were partly difficult or not at all accessible. Many customers complained at the Federal Network Agency about long waiting times, interrupted calls and inaccessible hotline employees.

Bundesnetzagentur collects complaints

“Consumers are complaining that the duration of the holding loop is considerable and the connection is broken,” is the answer to the request from the Green Bundestag Fraction. Since the end of 2016, the Federal Network Agency has also registered an increased complaint volume of affected O2 customers. However, it was not possible to react to this problem, since queuing loops can always be used via a local number.

“It would be the least that the Federal Government or the authorities would seek the talk with eye-catching companies and demand binding improvements,” explains Nicole Maisch, Consumer Policy spokesperson for the Green Bundestag Fraction. “If, after these talks, no progress has actually been made, the Federal Government must continue to act here.”

However, in their view, it is not enough to examine merely options for action over months and not to actually become active. “Finally, the customer’s service claim does not end with the signature under a contract, even if some companies behave like this,” the spokeswoman said.

Concrete plans are in place

Concrete measures, such as the federal government in the future for reasonable hotline arrangements to ensure, does not exist yet. Nevertheless, consumer protectionists support the plans.

“It is desirable from a consumer perspective that the companies themselves ensure the availability of their customer service as part of the contractual performance and also promote quality as a customer-binding measure. It should also be discussed whether the statutory obligation to provide information in the telecommunications law should be extended with regard to the duration of the waiting period, even when using special call numbers billed per call and the use of local network call numbers, “says Ingmar Streese, Consumer Policy Director of the Consumer Federation (vzbv).

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